Dad

I graduated from high school in June of 1966. I was 18. My father was in Thailand at the time so he missed my graduation.
He made it home a couple of months later after being retired from the Army on the west coast. He was lost.
Before leaving for Thailand he had started telling me he would be dead before he was 50. He again repeated it after getting back. I think he was more terrified of growing old than of dying.
He died in April1967 at 46 from a heart attack. It was two months shy of my parents 20th anniversary. Dad was in Germany when he died. He had finagled an assignment as a civilian advisor in Germany. My mother, sisters, and brother were excited about following him back there once Billy graduated in June. About the same Konrad Adenaur, the first post-war Chancellor of Germany, died. It took a while to get his body back to the states as Germany went into mourning. I dropped out of college the day he died.
The company my father was working for took care of all the expenses of bringing him back and the funeral.
The neighborhood came to my mother and told her that they would provide the after funeral meal and she did not have to worry about anything.
My mother contacted my fathers best friend Mac when she told him that Bill had died his immediate response was "I'll be there in the morning". He drove from Massachusetts to Virginia and was there in the morning. When my mother said that when was coming home Mac told her that we could all stay with him for as long as it took to find a place, and we did and he did.
My mother asked my father's uncle Allen Murray a retired Catholic priest to do his funeral service at Arlington National Cemetery. She then asked the monsignor of the local Catholic church if he could put up my great uncle. It turns out that this priest had been a seminary classmate of my father and had had Father Murray as a teacher and greatly respected him. He was thrilled to be able to spend time with Father Murray.
My high school girlfriend even came down from Michigan.
Dad rode the horse drawn caisson to the chapel and the grave site. I don't remember much of the service other than my grand-uncle doing the service. He considered it to be a blessing to be able to do it and was gratified that my mother asked. I did not notice much until after the graveside service. I was thinking there were not many people there until I turned around and saw at least 50 people at the grave site. It was the last time I cried, and I bawled.

You could say that I lost my father then. In my mind I had lost him long before. While in Germany the first time both my parents started drinking heavily. There was not much to do on a base a quarter by a half mile in size and there was no television. My parents started spending evenings at the officers club.
The drinking continued as we returned to the states and for my father gradually got worse. When he got back from Thailand he was in a major state of depression and he had pretty much given up. I remember one morning reaching into the cupboard to get a bowl of cereal and knocking over a tall glass of bourbon and water. He was already drunk. I asked him why and his answer was "Because it is easier".
I think I was more angry at his giving up that the drinking. It took a long time for me to forgive him. Once I did I could start to see the hard life he had had.
My father was naturally left handed but was forced to be right handed. He went to parochial school and every time he used his left hand it was smacked with a bamboo rod that was sliced (a rattan I think).
From his stories I think he was a juvenile delinquent.
As the second son of an Irish Catholic he was forced into seminary. He did not last a year.
He was a see-bee during WW II and saw a lot of fighting. Early in the war he was setting up a machine gun nest with a childhood friend. Once it was setup he reported back to HQ that it was set. When he got back a grenade had been thrown into the nest and the only person alive was his friend, whose last words were "It's your fault Stan!" He was scheduled to be in the first wave to invade Japan and was in Nagasaki two weeks after the Bomb went off.
He went to South Korea to help with reconstruction. While there he saw a lot of suffering. He was also in an accident that resulted in his being thrown from a jeep and the jeep rolling down the hill to land on top of him. His back was broken and it was hours before he was found (the driver was killed).
When in Thailand a large earth mover rolled down a hill killing one man and leaving another pinned. My father wound up cutting the surviving man out with a welding torch. He had to cut through the man that died. No one else had the stomach to do it.
When his mother died his two brothers fought each other and for years they only communicated through my father, the middle son. It bothered him.
He smoked Camels for most of my life with him.
He also had a bleeding ulcer from as far back as I could remember, until 1961 when 60% of his stomach was removed. He was days away from bleeding to death.

Our parents loved us and wanted us to be happy. We were always welcome. There was no mistreatment that I saw.